Has it been three months already?

The fourth expansion for SolForge, "Reign of Varna" has dropped and with it come a slew of new cards, new modes, client updates and balance changes.

A smaller-than-average expansion, there are 48 new cards to collect in "Reign of Varna". These cards include a new keyword and a new concept, player abilities!

• Ambush - a card that plays itself from your hand on the opponent's turn if they meet the trigger condition
• Player Abilities - players now can gain abilities (denoted by an exclamation mark over the player portrait) that currently include armor, poison (ouch!), and multi-turn abilities granted by the new legendary cards.

Pretty bananas right? There's a handful of new cycles as well including a shittier spell equivalent to the Bound cycle and a set of utility spells that allow you to choose one of two effects when cast. A slew of balance changes are here as well, with a handful of nerfs to some of the more reviled cards and Wegu conspicuously untouched.

One of the main focuses with this new set seems to be new players. Not only do new accounts now start with four mono-faction decks (over two dual-faction decks), SBE has finally introduced a rudimentary campaign mode to SolForge. There are only six missions currently with more on the way "soon", and completing them will earn the player a total of four boosters, four Heroics, and two Legendary cards. While the first four missions serve as a sort of extended tutorial, the last two missions have unique twists. The final mission is particularly tricky, with all your creatures dying when they deal damage to the opposing player and the opponent automatically dropping a Level 4 Cercee late in the game.

Other changes include a tweaking to the daily rewards, a notification log for any pop-up notifications you have received during your session, and a massive revision to the draft pool. The full list can be found here but can be summarized as follows:

• All Legendary cards
• All Set 5 cards
• All Set 4 cards
• A selection of Set 1-3 cards

One of the more notable omissions is of the Bound cards from Set 3. While they made decks more consistent, the inability to draft them consistently meant many games were determined simply by who had more of them. Also Matrix Warden is back WOOO Matrix Warden!

So I guess there's never been a better time to get into SolForge? Except for the fact that the more cards there are, the more difficult it is to get into any CCG/DCG. Well, if you ever do want to play, let me know. I'll be over here grinding out the new draft environment.

How is the drafting anyway? I guess credit to Solforge for releasing cards efficiently. Have savants gone the way of the dodo?

My anecdotal observation: at a certain point I was having way less fun playing people in constructed, because it felt like the community that had stuck with the game had, by this point, just bought a zillion heroic chests or whatever, so the amount of legendaries I had at my disposal (mostly only in quantities of 1 each) just wasn't holding a candle to anything anybody else was playing in the metagame because that 3x of every relevant Legendary and Heroic. This eventually led to me finding more fun just playing my decks against my decks through the AI.

I still think the game (in constructed, at least) is inherently pretty unfriendly to people with a small collection, even relative to other CCGs, because with no mana curve, you don't have situations where "oh, I need some cards that cost 2 mana and do something helpful" that might be commons. Instead, there is really no disincentive to just play Legendaries and Heroics and the handful of really good Rares. The Commons are almost all unplayably bad, and even most of the Rares aren't that good, while some of the Heroic and Legendary creatures have an insane amount of value in them.

Sorry if we've had this exact discussion in a previous thread. I know you're probably one of the bigger proponents of this game on the site, and I remember I've posted something on the site about SolForge before, possibly on this same topic.

@fredchuckdave: Savants haven't been a thing since set 3. That's not true, Flameshaper still saw some play until set 4. The drafting environment was pretty shitty for most of set 4. A handful of cards pushed Nekrium/Uterra into major draft dominance. It's too early for me to say how the new draft is, except that I'm currently 6-0 playing an A/T deck and currently a N/U deck and nothing I've seen either in my drafts or my opponent's decks that seems to favor an particular faction/combo.

NM I'm 6-1 now, Dysian Syphon is still a fucking nightmare.

@bisonhero: You're not wrong. Although one of the most dominant decks for the last two sets was built around a largely Heroic core, every new set and mini-expansion seems to push one or two incredibly powerful cards that the entire meta warps itself around. I mean, that's sort of CCG 101 but it also means you have to be investing a significant amount of time/money if you want to remain competitive in constructed. It's why I've dropped off of constructed queues and instead stick to draft and randoms online.

Can't really complain though, they've gotta make money somewhere right?

@starvinggamer: As much as I kind of hate myself for continuing to play Hearthstone because it's such a pale imitation of MtG, I do appreciate that to some extent that game requires certain utility cards that they've made easily available at common or rare. Stuff that Silences, draws cards, mana ramp in druid, etc. And a lot of the basic removal spells for each class are easily obtainable default class cards. The fundamental difference with SolForge is that with the 2-cards-per-turn thing, you just want to have as much inherent value in each card you play, and there are almost no utility cards because everything is either some minion with a ridiculous triggered ability or comes into play ability, or a spell that has some incredibly powerful impact on the board. I haven't kept up with the past couple sets, but the only thing I've seen that even seems like a "utility" effect would be Technosmith and all of the other cards with that mechanic.

I could never get into SolForge. Of the recent spate of PC based CCGs that have come out, the only one that grabbed me was Scrolls. Hearthstone is too random and not fun, even if it is super well presented. SolForge just made me wish I was playing Scrolls though, because I much prefer the way lanes are used in Scrolls to make it more like a strategy game combined with a card game.

Today was pretty exciting! Drafted a little (with great success), was yet again foolish enough to check out constructed tournaments day one without having spent money (got my fucking face smashed in) and finished the campaign scenarios (actually lost the last one and build a little burn deck to get revenge on Varna). So far so good. I've been playing the game since the QL and enjoyed most of my time with it greatly. Set 2 and 4 were probably my favorite constructed environments (playing mainly NT Control and AT Tempo/ Control respectively). Set 2 draft was pretty entertaining as well even though the format lacks all the elegance constructed offers.

SolForge is quite excellent but really expensive if you're looking to actually compete in constructed. Since I'm pretty sure my money-spending days in SF are over for good I'm not too sure I can keep doing what I enjoy for much longer. I like to think I've grown into a pretty decent player by now but I'm just not capable of pushing my winrate to a safe 75% all the time, especially not if I want to build some unusual and experimental decks every once in a while. Therefore I'm slowly but surely bleeding currency and falling behind in regards to my card pool.

The new starters seem actually usable in the current meta, which is great, and I loved seeing some glorious oldschool cards appear in my draft picks again. Hard to tell how the meta will shake out but right now I don't feel like chasing the new power cards in an even bigger pool once again. However, I felt the same during the dark Broodqueen days and I didn't quit the game then. Just started coasting on my already won spoils!

But ultimately I agree with you: it seems like new players have got more casual newbie stuff to do before they need to decide what they want out of SF and how much money that's worth to them. Because you sure as shit aren't going to play this game for free if you want more than a basic but relatively generous demo.